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WIRED Reports That Much of MAGA Is Convinced Butler Assassination Attempt Was Staged

Brett T.
Brett T.  |  6:00 PM on April 18, 2026

This is news to us. We know there are plenty of liberal nutjobs who think that the assassination attempt on candidate Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, was staged, even though a Trump supporter in the stands was shot to death defending his family. We've heard the claims that it was a ketchup packet. We've heard people asking, "Where's the wound?" Almost immediately after Trump was shot in the ear, people were claiming that he wasn't shot, but hit by glass from a teleprompter screen, even though the photos showed them all intact.

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Now, WIRED is reporting that MAGA is now convinced that the entire assassination attempt was staged.

Let's see who reporter David Gilbert considers MAGA. Gilbert reports:

As Trump’s hold over MAGA has waned, though, an increasing number of his supporters have begun to push the narrative that the entire incident was staged.

"I think that maybe it was staged," Tim Dillon said on his show last weekend about the assassination attempt. Dillon, who was previously a staunch Trump supporter, went on to share that Trump should now come out and say, “Some people are going to be upset by this, but we staged the assassination attempt in Butler to show people how important it was to vote for me and how far I was willing to go for them.”

…

But the claims that Trump had staged the entire thing really picked up steam when former US National Counterterrorism Center director Joe Kent appeared on [Tucker] Carlson’s podcast last month, one day after he resigned from his position over the Iran war.

The same Joe Kent who resigned as director of the National Counterterrorism Center because he could not "in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran"? The same Joe Kent who said last month that a “foreign nexus” (i.e., Israel) may have been involved in Charlie Kirk’s assassination?

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But he also cites Candace Owens and the QAnon group on Telegram.

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What's genuinely concerning is that the majority of the people in the replies are saying that MAGA is finally waking up to what they knew immediately. People actually believe it was staged. Not true MAGA, though.

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